JM
Thursday 5 January 2012
Thoughts And Language
What makes a language a language? And can we live without it? Simply no, no we cannot. New languages are still being found today, for example just recently a new language in India was discovered making the total number of languages in the world 6,909. Another thought to consider is can a language ever be mastered? For example China has such a complex system of alphabets that no one can speak it fluently, only the most educated will know roughly 5,000 characters. For other, less educated people they get by with little more than 500 characters. Language does not always have the same meaning either, it changes depending on the culture, and people who live in tribes use language only to pass on the tribe’s traditions. Where as we, use language every day to communicate and to think. Is it possible to think without language? In the 19th. century, a German Philosopher named Wilhelm Von Humboldt said that ‘Language is directly connected to thinking’ so what about those of us who never learned to speak? What if there are people out there, who never learned language because they were simply unable to, is it possible to say that these people cannot think? And what about selective mutes? Where do they stand on the matter? They are fully capable of speech but choose not to use it, why? Some suggest that it is related to shyness, but there are cases where they don’t talk at all, not even to family members. Which brings us to conformity, do we truly conform to language or are we forced to learn it, to fit in with the crowd? It has been shown that our native language affects how a person thinks, so are we conforming to this? Or is language an element of our lives that we simply can’t live without? Or won’t.
JM
JM
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What is the detail to Wilhelm's contribution to linguistic theory and practice? Is there a 'famous' passage from a key publication/text? He has a University named after him! The relevance to our German audience? What about alphabets? The relevance/importance of sign/signed language... DA
ReplyDeleteIt is also interesting how people think differently depending on the language they speak, even relating to the physical world and what they can see. For example, some African languages do not distinguish between blue and green. When shown coloured cards in a random order, people speaking these languages would often say that the blue and green cards were the same colour as one another. Their senses were caught out simply because the two colours were given the same name. Our link to language runs so deep, that it seems even our physical world is intrinsically tied to it.
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